


And Into Ashes

by shadow_in_the_shade



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst and Porn, Consensual Non-Consent, Consent Issues, F/M, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Porn with Feelings, Power Dynamics, Telepathic Bond, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-03-27 16:37:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13884846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_in_the_shade/pseuds/shadow_in_the_shade
Summary: Really this is just an excuse for a whole lot of vault sex with some framing in plot (vague) and many feels (complex and numerous) starting from the moment Missy enters the vault and ending in The Doctor Falls.The title is from Marvell's To His Coy Mistress because I am unoriginal and bad at titles."Nor, in thy marble vault, shall soundMy echoing song; then worms shall tryThat long-preserved virginity,And your quaint honour turn to dust,And into ashes all my lust;The grave’s a fine and private place,But none, I think, do there embrace."





	1. Chapter 1

 

**1.**

In the time it takes to stand there, staring at her hand, several lifetimes shoot through her head- _like all the stars we never saw,_ she thinks. She thinks; _oh, why? Why’d I have to think that? Why not let it go? Why always back to bitterness, like it’s the default._ She can’t. She can’t ever ever let it go. Bitterness is the new drumbeat; she hardly knows what she would be without it.

Her fingers tingle from that touch, every one of them from the tip down, crackles of energy across the knuckles all the way down to her wrists. It could spread down her arms until every bit of her is crackling with it. That’s what he does. What they do. What they’ve always done. Oh yes; so many lifetimes, the tingling massing in her palm like a ball of energy she could throw to destroy something, but what does she do now? Only lets it eat her up. _He_ would never do that – she glances to her Alternate, disappearing above her. He would just destroy. Oh. Except he did do that, he let it eat him up until there was no option left but to shoot out. She remembers that power, that high, why does she feel like she’s losing it then? She was weaker back then.

And why this? Why do her fingers curl in around this touch as though clutching at something that suddenly seems closer than it did before? A past she never thought she could get back (she didn’t, did she?) suddenly visible if not quite tangible. Near on a thousand years and it’s not been as though they’ve never touched, far from that – is it possible they just never held hands? She thinks back.

How she just played still, flopping onto the floor, not entirely an act – she supposes she had expected to die. She had expected him to kill her? Had she? Really? She wasn’t sure. How she let them carry her into the vault –that place – she wonders if it is still there. A part of her would like – albeit whimsically- to blow the place up, be a cinch to do it – another part of her didn’t hate her time there, in fact she thinks she might miss it – what? Stockholm syndrome? Maybe. Who cares? Thinking back isn’t like remembering – she relives it, because there’s no such thing as the past, not for them. She wonders what it would be like to have a linear thought process; how the brain does jump about. She wonders if humans think in straight lines. Anyway. So gentle they are, the Doctor and the egg – man – robot – thing, carrying her as though – but it’s stupid – she is something precious, not to be damaged. It’s the first time she hears a thought slip from him. _You are,_ he thinks, but he battens down on it quickly, just not quickly enough. He tries to shut out not only that he can hear her thinking and that he has just let her hear him but on the thought itself. She hears him think _Damn_ and his mind goes quiet to her again. She _hates_ that.

So she closes off too. It’s what she’s always done. What she has spent centuries learning to do. To shut off her thoughts to control others. One day she may admit to herself that she has always found it harder to do than he has, even controlling other people. He does it better than she does when he does it. So much power so often wasted. Damn again, she thought it. She did. She hears them talk around her, watches them out of the corner of her eye, fastening the intricate bolts of the door, discussing where to keep it; they get one journey with it, then they stay put. She wonders if he can really do it – tolerate her company for a thousand years. If she has to be honest with herself (well _that_ hurts) she wants him to, does not expect him to, definitely expects him to hate it. He couldn’t stay before after all. He’ll leave her, in her mind he always leaves her (once, Missy, it was _once_ ). It’s her own voice in her head trying to remind her. She tells it to shut up. She always does. _A thousand years_ –if she only wasn’t his prisoner she would delight in the prospect.

Earth, she hears them say, they’re going to Earth. Of _course_ they are.

She wonders how she’s still, after all this time, failed to destroy that planet. That planet he’s always been so obsessed with ( _Fuck Theta, will you ever shut up about Earth?)_ the one they keep coming back to, the one the majority of his little _friends_ come from. The one he keeps protecting (often enough from her) the place he loves more than he loves her. Oh, it stings. It will never ever stop stinging.

The Egg leaves and the Doctor turns back to her and she moves quickly, quicker than she expected but not quicker than he did, knife in hand, rushing him like a sharp savage gust of wind- but he catches her, wind and all, catching her wrist, knife out of her hand and skittering across the floor. She feels the growl rise in her throat, hiss out of her as she struggles for a moment but he holds her tight, arm around her waist, her back pressed against him, her wrist in his hand as though this is a dance. Well hasn’t it always been? He tightens the arm around her like a vice and he’s strong, stronger than he looks, but so is she; but he wins this one and he doesn’t need to hold her this tight and there it is and she almost grins visibly – that streak of cruelty she always so admired, even from when he was little. She’s not sure she could match it, and _sweet fuck_ she is so aroused right now.

“Better?”

His voice is closer to her ear than perhaps he means it to be and perhaps she’s reading too much into this but is he - ? She leans back a little, wriggling ever so slightly, accidentally on purpose almost – nope, she’s not reading too much into this – _stop that._ Surprising herself, she does.

“Not really. Didn’t really see that coming.”

“I did.”

“Really?”

“That you’d try to kill me as soon as we were alone? Yes Missy, I saw that coming.” He just sounds tired. She can’t decide if it’s amusing or disappointing.

“You might have just – not, just this once – I did just save your life, you know.”

“Oh I’m so sorry – should I be on my knees?”

She feels him swallow, feels a rush of faint thought, mostly feeling, entirely _want,_ go through him that he cannot possibly clamp down on. She can hear how hard he wants to throw her away from him; _you disgust me,_ but he doesn’t and she doesn’t and he would be lying. He’s always lying. She smirks – _I win._ He loosens his hold on her long enough for her to pull away and she swirls around to face him casually, entirely as though she does not care.

“You did – didn’t you?” She nods.  She has only just this moment started to think about that, but she thinks fast – “I particularly liked the part where they ran away from you in terror. You do know, _really_ , it should have been me saving your stupid life, don’t you? You’re much worse than me –”

“Stop it.”

“Oh, never. That’s your whole problem. But anyway, we’ll just file that for later, shall we? What’s next? The part where you pretend you only didn’t kill me because your stupid dead wife –”

“Don’t you _dare –_ ”

“- stupid dead so-called wife with bad hair told you not to? Please. Playing so dumb with the executioners but you’d foiled their nice Go-kill-me contraption, what, days before? Hours? As soon as you got the summons? You were never going to kill me, you never ever ever ever would, you can hide some things from me Doctor, but only so much, and all that cloak and dagger with your friend Mr Egg-in-the-hood was what- just for fun?”

“No.”

“Mostly for fun,” she shrugs. “You love the show. Just like I do. I _know_ you, Doctor.”

“Do you, I wonder.”

She shrugs –

“Nigh on a thousand years – I think I should have you sussed by now.”

“Then you know you’re got another thousand years to work with.”

“Oh, you’re really doing this, then?”

She turns away as soon as she says it. She should not have said that, should not have betrayed her surprise however faint, should not have raised the eyebrow and given face to any question. _Had_ she thought he would go through with it? She can’t quite tell. She supposes either answer would have surprised her in some way. Makes it alright then, she supposes, twirls back round.

“Of course you are.”

There’s no _of course_ here, but she doesn’t have to let him know that. But yes, in a way of course, of _course_ – if he could have he would have caged her and kept her as a pet regenerations ago; why in the last one, he as good as said so.

“How lovely for you.”

“No not really, no.”

She smiles, takes a gliding step closer; she has the second knife at his throat for a full satisfying second before he disarms her again. She shouldn’t have smiled; too much of a giveaway.

“You do know this entire thing might go better if you could just _stop trying_ to kill me? _”_

“Better’s subjective darling, it’d be far less fun.”

And there’s her wrist in his hand again, his other hand on her throat holding her back, except just for a moment his hand curls around the back of her neck and she catches him catch himself almost leaning forward to where his forehead should rest against hers, but he doesn’t, his hand slides firmly down the length of her back and back up over her ribs, and rests for a long time just below her throat. She tries not to swallow, tries to control her heartbeats, partially succeeds.

“And look, see – works for you.”

“Shut up – I’m searching you.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“For _weapons,_ Missy.”

“Oooh, care for me to return the favor?” She grins, bites her lip and grabs him in the crotch – “Oh there we are, found it! ” She removes her hand before he can fight her off – “Armed and dangerous.”

“I should have killed you.” He dips down, removing a dagger from each boot, but the movement presses his face into her neck and just for a second she is almost certain that he sniffs her. Her breath hitches, her chest moving with it in a way she hopes is not too obvious. His hand slides up her leg, impatiently pushing aside her skirt and moving hard against her skin and he does not mean to but he accidentally catches her eye and for a moment they’re staring at each other, tasting each other’s breath and he cannot help but move closer and she can hear his hearts beat and then she can feel them pressing against her chest and their lips are so close and his hand tightens around her wrist, thumb brushing her pulse and dear _gods_ how long has it been anyway? She finds herself terribly in danger of whimpering because he wants her, he really does and if it’s not love and it might be (and it might not be and either way she can’t trust him, not even faintly, and he can’t trust her but that’s hardly relevant right now) well it hardly matters. She feels paused for a moment, a lifetime of electricity crackling between them, his hand brushing too gently and for too long against her skin and even he cannot pretend his head does not incline towards her, every energy in the universe pushing them together – oh, but hasn’t it always felt like that? Then his hand finds the knife strapped to her thigh – the one he knew would be there - and she grins, all teeth as he removes it with a snap, though inside her hearts are sinking and she can feel the moment falling away and he pulls back, his hands full of weapons, disappearing into his coat pockets, but he looks at her more apologetic than anything else. She can see his throat working and knows how that feels, all that emotion, rising up and trying to choke you, the effort of repression like trying not to be sick. She can feel him wanting to say _I’m sorry_ , almost see it on the tip of his tongue, but she cannot tell quite what it is he is sorry for. He crosses the floor, picking up the last two daggers, not looking at her though she does not take her eyes off him for one moment. He still does not look at her as he walks back past her and knocks on the door. It is opened from the other side and he pauses in the entrance, slipping through the smallest crack he can leave in the door –

“I’ll be back soon,” he says, almost a mumble, and he _still_ does not look at her.

She stares at the door long after he has left, a half hypnotic stare with nothing to fix upon, and a faint smile flickers round her lips. She thinks hard about her smile, makes it a fixed point away from what could be a swirling mess of thoughts.

 _Well,_ she thinks – _isn’t this going to be a ride._

__x__

  **K' I know I sold this on the basis of "This fic is basically porns" but uh - Imma take as long as I can until I actually get to that. Because I love it when he's Mr Volcano :-)**

**Also idk how to tag this in the Categories section? Went for F/M and also** _Other_ **cause there's no tag for non binary. tell me I'm not the only one stressing about this?**


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

To be honest, she does not try the door too hard; merely examines it briefly, more for something to do than anything. If she was being honest with herself- and just for now she has no intention of being – she supposes, in retrospect at least, that she was afraid she might too easily escape and – weighing it up – she really did not want that, not just yet.

She thinks, _thank god I’m already bonkers, because this place –_

This place. It was never designed for someone alive. So often she wishes for a different mind inside her mind (still missing the one that used to live there just like she lived in his?) but just now she loves her head which never forces her to exist necessarily in the exact location her body is in. Her mind can wander for so long she does not always know if it will come back. Still. The place – once she has circled it, examined it – could drive anyone insane, the big empty expanse of it. She likes _things,_ needs to be busy, and while the prospect of tormenting the Doctor from here for a thousand years is more than faintly delightful she knows he won’t be here all the time and does not relish the drag of the hours in between.

So she sleeps; with little to see and no way to keep track of any, even basic, time system, she decides she may as well just sleep. She takes off her dress and bundles it up for a pillow, curling up on it in her petticoats in the very center of the room. A corner is more tempting but like hell is he going to catch her curled up in one like an animal; or corner her, he might be tempted to an expression of faint pity and then she really _would_ have to kill him. Rather than bear that.

She wakes at the first sound of someone at the door, but she stays very still, one eye half open, curious to see what he will do. She curls around the knife in her hand – the one she had been keeping laced into her corset - as though it were a teddy bear. She keeps tight control on her heartbeat lest it quicken and he notice. She suspects he _would_ notice. 

He pauses just inside, looking at her, setting two large bags down on the floor. She can smell and sense so many things - a self-imposed calm she suspects she can easily crack, his composure, re-established but fragile. When he looks at her it becomes more confused, she is surprised to feel overwhelmingly a sensation from him of tenderness towards her and then she hears it quite clearly _– beautiful – why are they always so beautiful?_ And he walks towards her quietly. When he bends over her, tentative hand outstretched, she moves like lightning and for a second the point of the dagger is against his throat. He steps back quickly and sighs, and she’s standing and he’s shaking his head at her and does not try to disarm her and she frowns, not liking it.

“Predictable,” he says – “Always so predictable, Missy – well, do it then. Kill me.” Something in his voice makes it sound like a dare and it irks her intensely, a scratchy little animal of irritation in her chest.

“Don’t test me,” she says, arm still outstretched like an executioner, but he has his throat bared to her, almost offered up, and it’s just not the same.

“Why not?”

“Because I will.”

“No you won’t.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“You wouldn’t say _don’t test me_ if you didn’t think you would fail.”

She shouts briefly in frustration and stamps her foot. Of course she would never _just_ kill him, just like that, but she feels it hardly fair of him to call her out point blank on this. He smirks. That’s enough. She spins around and stabs him in the right heart. He staggers back and for a long moment she feels a swirling dizzying combination of sickness and exhilaration. Then he pulls the knife out and pockets it, staring at her, breathless but unsurprised.

“ _Ouch,”_ he says – “I forgot that would actually hurt.”

She blinks at him for a beat, and he shrugs _smugly._

“Knife proof vest,” he says – “I said you were predictable”

“You wore – armour?” She grins – it almost makes up for the sting of being called predictable. “I mean essentially – you wore _armour_ to come visit me? A helpless lady in a vault.”

“Oh helpless my foot, and lady my arse – ouch – you know that _scratched.”_

“Diddums. You want me to kiss it better for you?”

“No, I’d infinitely prefer it if you didn’t.”

“Now,” she beams – “Where were we? Do you know, Doctor I don’t think I properly expressed my condolences – how is your dead wife? Oh that’s right – dead. Did you mourn? Still mourning – is that why you’ve lost your boner for me? Oh no wait – you hadn’t.”

“Really? That’s where you want to go? You know Missy, you seem very hung up on River –”

“Please Doctor, like I want to hear that name in my very own vault.”

“Jealous?”

“Ugh, please –” (but she is, she is, she can‘t hide it, maybe she shouldn’t have gone here after all) – “ I have an itemized list somewhere of nine hundred years of betrayal and disappointment Doctor, I hardly think one more is going to make a difference.”

“We’re moving on, then?”

“Like lightning. What did you bring?”

“It’s just a start –” he walks back to the door to fetch over the bags, though she notices with no small degree of satisfaction that he does not turn his back to her. He comes back, kneeling down beside her on the floor, she kneels with him and starts opening them up.

“Books. I thought about a hundred might see you through a week. Food and a fridge –”

“That is a _bag_ that is –” she can’t help nodding approvingly – “I want one.”

“What for? You’re not leaving this vault.”

“Aesthetic,” she mutters – “Carry on.”

“There’s a bed. It’s flat pack.”

She examines it.

“It’s a double.” She looks at him sideways, smile flickering evilly – “Planning on staying?”

“You –”

“Are you _blushing?_ Oh you are, you’re –”

“Shut up. It’s for you. Or do you not sprawl all over the place in your sleep anymore?”

“I never did. That was you. I was the one clinging to the edge going _dear lord Theta how many limbs do you have –_ remember? You’re confusing the two of us again dear - I know – it’s easily done.”

“Please Kosch –” he stops quickly, and she stares at him wide-eyed, half in delight, half in horror, swallowing her gasp and trying to do it silently but only really succeeding in making a noise halfway between a swallow and a gasp.

For a brief terrible second they stare at each other and everything feels fragile and exposed, the world they seem to be building here quivering like silver leaves in autumn. Then he looks away. He always looks away first; it has been making her angry for nine hundred years. Why, for the first time does it now make her want to cry? And even at the same time as that curious welling sensation she still thinks, _I win_ because she can always outstare him, _always._

“I should –” he starts and she almost snarls, anger rushing over sadness in a flash –

“Oh wait, I know this part – _I should go._ Well don’t you always? Is this it then, is this how it’s going to be? You visit what, every day? Stay maybe a few minutes, then find it’s too boring in here for you or too awkward or I’m too something – I don’t know – take your pick, all the things I’ve always been too much of for you. Well don’t waste your time. I don’t need you.”

She stands up and turns away from him, angry at him, furious with herself, incensed with the way her eyes are smarting. What _is_ this?

“ _Missy –“_ he sounds impatient and apologetic all at once, which is fine but he also sounds _sorry_ which is not and she swings a clenched fist at him when he takes a tentative step behind her, reaching to touch her arm. He avoids it easily.

“You know I don’t like this any more than you do –”

“Oh really?” she whips back around – “Because forgive me Doctor if I find that more than a little hard to believe.”

“Because I really want to be stuck to one place and one time for a thousand years.”

“Well then _don’t._ You already broke those peoples rules. Who says you have to keep me here?”

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“Ugh. That moral high horse of yours always was your least attractive feature.”

“Your tendency to destruction and murder was always yours.”

She snorts;

“Pfft – _hobbies._ ”

“Yeah, that’s your problem right there.”

“You know –” she swerves wildly into a different tack, walking slowly back around into his field of vision, feeling his eyes follow her, hearing the thought that intrudes on him so loudly – _beautiful, so beautiful, always so beautiful, does she know? Oh god those skirts are almost see-through at that angle – I want -_

She pauses, lingering on the angle, and smiles, licking her lips thoughtfully with the tip of her tongue, hearing him stifle a wordless thought that is really little more than a groan.

“I could make this hell on earth for you.” She nods to herself. “Yes indeedy, I could make this far _far_ worse for you than it is for me.”

“If that’s how you want it,” he thins his lips tightly – “That you’d fight every decision I ever make is really all I’d expect by now.”

“You can’t –” she makes a soft _mpfh_ of frustration – “You can’t _always_ stop me doing something just by telling me you expected it, you know.”

“Not always, but enough.”

“I hate you!” she snaps, growls, slapping him suddenly, swiftly in the face, fingers curling into claws that would scratch him if he did not catch her wrist _again,_ his sigh soft but his grip harsh – “You’re a smug, self centered bastard coward with a moral stick so far up your arse I’m amazed it doesn’t come out your mouth –”

“You’re nine hundred, not nine!”

“No,” she snaps. “I _liked_ you when I was nine.”

He holds her tight, fingers pushing into her pulse as she struggles and squirms and he _wants her_ she feels it, hears it as loud as if he has shouted _throw her down, pin her down, fuck her until she screams and more -_ and it sends sweet shivers through her to hear it and she stops squirming to smirk up at him, her turn to be smug and he looks at her for a second before he realizes and swallows hard –

“Yeah,” she nods. “I heard that.”

He moves on her like a falcon diving, catching her smile in his lips and kissing her, though the attack is so savage she would hesitate to call it kissing. Still, she falls into it instantly and he drags her so close she can feel everything, how much he wants her, how violently his hearts are beating and he kisses her hungrily, furiously like he’s been dying and cannot bear that she is the only thing that will save him. Kissing her like he wants to hurt her, fingers clenching around her wrist until the pulse disappears and thunders in his own chest all at once and she can feel everything – everything he feels and she knows that means he must feel her feelings too, her hearts galloping, her readiness. She throws out thoughts as aggressively as he holds onto her to blind him with the words in her heads, distracting him from her heart beats – _Better,_ she thinks, and _about time too_ and, _so is this how it’s going to be instead? You visit every day to fuck the prisoner? Not that I’m objecting, but I never knew that was your –_

Oh. She can feel it taking every effort of will he has to push her away.

“No –” he gasps, groans it out, barely able to speak, looking at her in a horror even she can see is directed at himself for once, but she’s the closest thing he has to himself that he can look at. Sometimes she wonders if that’s not why he hates her.

“No – we won’t – I won’t do this –”

“Why?” She shrugs – “It’d only be the first time with this body – and you know it’s a good one. I know you know.”

“Not like this. It’s not right. Not when you’re – my prisoner,” he says the last two words reluctantly, she notices, putting it aside for later, stock piling all the chinks in his resolve that she can work on.

“What?” she sneers – “You can’t tell me you’re – you can’t possibly mean you won’t fuck me out of –” she grasps for the word, under the circumstances the thought is utterly alien to her – “- Respect?”

He nods. He won’t look at her, he thinks, _if I look at her I’m lost –_ it’s the last thing she hears from him before she feels him close off. She will never stop hating that.

“That’s exactly what I mean. I’ll –”

He backs away from her towards the door as though he’s scared of her. She grins, well but she _loves_ that.

“Tomorrow,” he mumbles, almost running out the door. She stares at it, smile curving –

“Yes Doctor, run. Run away like you always do. You’ll break my dear, you’ll break, I’ll see to it.”

She frowns.

“Talking. Talking out loud to the room.” She shrugs and beams and goes back to the bags, humming softly as she inspects her things.

__x__

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

**3.**

“It’s day three in The Vault House, and the Doctor has just popped in to visit his oldest and dearest friend!” she announces out loud as the Doctor enters. He pauses, swallows a sigh; she smiles brightly from a stripy folding chair, puts down her book and pushes the sunglasses back onto her head.

“What the Doctor does not know is that in his absence Missy has been thinking of every possible way to make his life a living hell for the next one thousand years!” she adds brightly.

“Try again.” He walks over to her and pulls out a second deck chair. She hears him think about armchairs, a sofa even, wondering how much will fit into one of his bags – “Actually don’t –” he stops her as she opens her mouth – “This is not a reality TV show.”

“Could be,” she comes back quickly. “What could we call it? How about Two Time Lords One Vault? Oh I know wait this is better – Two Time Lords One bed? Naah, that’s more of a fanfic don’t you think?”

“Fan – fic?”

“Oh darling, try it. Some of them will blow your mind. Oh, are we sitting now? Is that what’s happening?”

The Doctor pauses half way into his chair.

“Because that would a, imply I’d given you leave to sit with me in my sad wee prison and b, suggest we were friends – I don’t know? Hanging out? Is that what the cool kids do? Because I was thinking about the hanging part, if you were concerned, but I’m not seeing a lot of _out_ in my future.”

“Do you ever shut up?”

“You should hear me when you’re not here. This is _reticence._ ”

He sighs.

“Other people have sensible –” he stops, but not before she hears him think _soul mates._ She smirks. It was something they used to say to him when they were little. She stops thinking about it before the thought turns sad.

“So,” she puts the sunglasses back on and turns to smile at him brightly. He takes this as the sign it is to sit down in the second folding chair – “Wat did you bring me today? Because I really hope it’s a full mini library, a bowl of fruit and a bathroom.”

“A bathroom?”

“What? That’s the part of that which bothers you? I may be magical but a girl’s still gotta poop, you know.”

“Oh god.” She watches the look that sinks over his face with glee – “What _have_ you been – I mean – where did you – up until now?”

He follows her pointed gaze to one of the bags he left behind.

“Oh god.” His eyebrows raise alarmingly.

“Oh _god,”_ he says again – “That is – that is possibly the most flagrant abuse of Time Lord technology I have ever…” he trails off in horror.

“Bathroom. Next time you’re here,” she repeats – “Or else I get _really_ imaginative.”

“Fine. Just promise you won’t get too _imaginative_ before tomorrow?”

She grins at him and promises nothing.

“And take those sunglasses off. There’s no sun. That just looks shifty.”

She pushes them down her nose and looks over them –

“Shifty?”

“And ridiculous.”

“Oh, c’mon –” she drawls, folding the glasses up in her hand – “Admit you just want to be able to see my pretty eyes.”

“Don’t start.”

They sit in awkward silence for a long moment while the Doctor looks around. At any rate, she thinks, _he_ feels awkward. She wonders if she would feel it if he did not. As it is she simply watches him, drinking in his discomfort, wondering how to make it worse.

“You made the bed up then?” he says at last.

“Aha, excellent first observation, Doctor – care to try it? It’s really quite comfortable.”

“I am _not –_ “ he looks at her wildly, all of a sudden pleadingly – “Missy, please –”

“Ohh,” she breathes – “I like it when you’re begging.”

“Don’t –”

“I can hear your hearts beat,” she says idly, the very idleness of it wickedly intentional. But she really can and it is thunderous; _five minutes_ , she thinks, _give the man five minutes and he cracks. I didn’t even do anything._ There’s a part of her that’s disappointed – she is surprised to realise it – disappointed that he can control himself so little, that he never could. In way she supposes their lust has always got the better of them, getting in between all verbal attempts at reconciliation and comfortable friendship. This is how it’s always been, they’ve cracked and fallen into each other, loving frantically, silently and urgently and hating each other just as much at the end of it with nothing ever solved between them. Another part of her would not have it any other way, but it lies as much as the disappointed part of her lies. She just wants everything, all at once, as impatient at least as he is. Too much so to ever seriously work on anything. She wonders if this is why he’s trying so hard not to this time, even though she can feel his need for her, smell it like a storm about to break.

“No,” he says and she frowns. She _has_ to get better at shielding her thought processes if he’s going to keep doing it to her – “That’s not it. I told you.” He looks her in the eye for the first time and she almost looks away, there is so much fire burning there it almost catches her. She does not look away.

“I want you. I can’t lie,” he says “Maybe more than I’ve ever wanted anything in this lifetime. But I will cut my hand off before I reach for you again as long as you’re here and it’s – like this. I’m supposed to be guarding your body not –”

“Fucking it?” Her voice sounds a little too high even to her own ears – “I’m sure I’ve made it clear enough that I really wouldn’t object – well unless that was your kink. I can do just about anything you –”

“Stop it.” He stands up, looks away – “Just stop. I –”

“You’re what? Going to just leave again? Is this all I get  - five minutes every time before you can’t cope and run off slapping the sausage?”

“I am _not –”_ but he colours so quickly and so brightly that he cannot continue.

“Ha,” she says, staring him down triumphantly (but it shakes her, it does, the waves of his lust pulsing out of him like a physical thing swaying her, threatening to drag her down and she’s not sure she can cope but she can’t run away and anyway _she’s_ not the one trying not to but she wants him with everything she is and it itches deeper than physical it always has but god just curing the physical would be enough –)

“Do you _want_ me to stay?” he asks and that’s not fair, she scowls, direct straight questions – utterly unfair. There is no way to answer this without damning herself one way or another especially with just a –

“Yes or no,” he persists – “I can’t have this dance every day.”

Every one of her she’s ever been would say no, she knows it, and there’s a minute there, far too long a minute where she almost just says yes but –

“It’s really not what I want that matters here, is it? I’m not the one who wants me here.”

He sighs. She notices him noticing that she did not just say _no_ and cannot decide whether or not to be glad of it.

“I don’t know,” he says slowly, thinking – “I don’t know how long I’ll have- at any one time but I promise I will be here every day. I’m –thinking about getting a job.”

She laughs, then snorts, then scowls –

“What, really? Doing what? Where are we anyway, and when?”

“Bristol, England, start of the twentieth century, only I wired us up a time loop of two hundred years so we get to do the next two centuries five times –”

“What because of all the times and places in the universe, these two centuries on this drab planet are you all time favouritest favorite _ever?”_

“Essentially, yes. That and I can get away with being in the same job a hundred years or so but people might start poking around after a thousand.”

She nods –

“And you’re going to do what exactly?”

“I thought I might teach. There’s a University just above us, recently built. I’ve done it before.”

“I hardly think your old academy qualifications are going to cut it on this worthless little planet Doctor. What else have you got?”

“Charm and psychic paper?” he grins widely. She rolls her eyes.

“Oh fine. You do your silly thing. Come home to the wife in the evenings? I am neither making your dinner nor taking your shoes off for you. In case you were going to ask.”

“You’re not my – we’re not – I mean –” he colours up again and trails off, wondering why a huge part of his denial feels untrue – “I have more things,” he says finally and they unpack almost companionably. This time he takes all but one of the bags with him, tucking them under his arm.

“Right,” he says eventually, holding the bags partially across himself as well as under one arm, to form a shield almost – “Tomorrow then. I’ll bring –” he pats the list in his pocket.

“And a vibrator!” Missy yells when he’s all but out the door. She had saved his up for this precise moment. He turns –

“A what?”

“You heard me! A vibrator. A really big one. With batteries. Unless there’s an electricity source in here which I very much doubt.”

“A – vibrator?”

“Did I fucking stutter, or are you just getting mental images? Large. Pink. For whacking off with. You get the idea.”

“I –” his mouth moves silently for a moment and she watches like a cat toying with a mouse – “Fine”.

This time when the door locks she has her plan of attack for the following weeks ready and prepared.

__x__


	4. Chapter 4

**4.**

The next time he arrives, it is to find her lounging across two deck chairs, sunglasses in place, book in hand and dress on the floor.

“Staring!” she announces, grinning, not about to let a moment slide – “Definitely staring.”

He blinks rapidly and repeatedly trying not to, but it’s hard and she can hear his mind screaming at him, taking up that earlier cry of _beautiful, so beautiful, too beautiful, how do I, what do I, I can’t, I want, I want I want, help –_ and hammering frantically on the inside of his skull with it, his chest tight and everything hot and fierce, squeezing down on the animal trapped inside, crushed between his hearts and scratching at his ribs. She can almost _feel_ it. She seizes that weakness and rides it –

“You’d be the first you know,” she says, idle as can be, and the game is so irresistible to her it’s hard to be as casual as she would like. She watches his face like a hawk to see him process this.

“Yep.” She closes her book, drops it theatrically onto the floor and takes off the glasses, blinking in the light, even the blinking a part of the act, the tease, the _torment_ he thinks, he wonders – she knows because she hears him – how she does that – how she can make eyes like that droop into warmth and innocence, wide and round and liquid. There are stars in those pools and galaxies and all the things that lure him and terrify him and he tries to look away but she walks towards him slowly, sauntering, keeping eye contact like a snake. She never could hypnotize him, not like they could with humans; it does not mean he is not trapped and captured in her eyes. She laughs silently, in her chest, hearing his mind whirr, smiling at the resolve with which he does not look away or move, but tenses himself to withstand whatever she may throw at him next, determined not to crumble as quickly as last time.

It’s too late, he’s already crumbling. She could tell he believed her as soon as she spoke, could see it in his eyes, how they track her with such feral hunger she would not need to hear him think to know it.  She presses –

“I mean I know I may look like a girl who’s seen it all and done the world but between you and me –” she circles him, like she’s circled him a dozen times in a dozen different bodies, resting an oh-so friendly  hand on his shoulder and leaning in to whisper in his ear, “- as a girl, I really haven’t.”

She feels him swallow hard and runs a gentle finger across his throat to feel it in a fluidly murderous motion.

“So you could –” she breathes, behind him, moving almost in slow motion – “Be my first – you know –” she dips back in to drop it in his other ear – “Again”.

She pushes against his mind hard with her own and he’s closed to her, always so closed, not letting her ever actually get right in though it does not mean he can stop her hearing and feeling a lot of the commotion on the inside. He half believes her; she can hear it, and he does not want to care and he does care and it _works_ that’s the main thing and he’s hard and hurting and aching for her and oh yes that’s the main thing, that he suffers, there is a part of her for which that has always been the most important thing and that part is satisfied now even if all the rest of her isn’t.

“Shall we –” he puts a distance of several strides between them – “Maybe just focus on, say, installing this bathroom?”

She can hear him so loudly not thinking of the feel of her breath on his ear, not thinking about her words, her wide eyes, her offered innocence real or imagined. She can see him not looking at her, not noticing the fall of the light through her petticoats, the rise and fall of her breasts, the way her hair tickles her shoulders. She likes the way it tickles, makes her almost giggly, helps the game along.

“Oh absolutely,” she says, as though it’s what they’ve been talking about all along. “Fine, yes absolutely, completely, okily dokily. Bathroom it is, just what I was thinking, Mm hmm and yup and do let’s.”

“Do you know I think we should play a wonderful game where you stay quiet.”

:”Hum. No. Uh-uh. I don’t like that. I never win.”

“You know that’s very childish.”

“You’re very childish.”

“That is not –”

“Are so!”

“Am not – shut up!”

She likes it when he smiles. He smiles now. She wants him to suffer. She wonders the two thoughts in her head don’t tear the place apart for all their fighting. Maybe, after all, that’s exactly what they always do. They work together all that afternoon, wrestling the bathroom from the Doctor’s bag and installing it in one of the far corners.

-x-

“You know I’ve been fucking my way around the universe since I regenerated,” she greets him apropos of nothing the next time he visits. She’s draped herself across the bed on her back, fingers idly/ not idly tracing the edge of her corset, looking down at her own breasts as though intrigued by them (she is, she has been ever since they appeared, loves them, plays with them like kittens, is distracted by her own softness, wants him to be even more so than she is). She rolls over, stretching like a cat, skirts falling down to around her knees in a froth of white, legs in the air crossed at the ankle, propping her chin in her hands and watching him, hungry for reaction. He does not disappoint, watching her with what looks like closed off- wariness but something flashing bright and sharp inside him on the instance of her words. She grins swiftly in a reflective flash; there’s something sharp, dangerous in that grin, she can see it through his eyes, she can always see how he sees her. It burns, sometimes painful, sometimes wonderful, often both.

She watches him carefully to see what he will do, how he will move next, every step a game she is determined she will win. Of course she knows he hates losing just as much as she does. He takes a step towards her, she does not move. He opens his mouth to speak, she does not let him –

“Yep,” she feels something uncoiling inside her, a spring of golden mischief ready to whirl out into a wave she simply has to ride – “Fucking my way across the stars, men, women, lizard people, that one time with the entire Judoon platoon – do you want me to go on?”

“No.”

“Oh well,” she shrugs, stretches, rolls back over yawning knowing his eyes are on her, hungry and wary and tense, exactly as ensnared as she means him to be. She can tell he believes her, just like he believed in her innocence yesterday and now he’s confused because he believes both stories and neither but he’s listening all the same and she hears it as he watches her stretch and yawn, playing with the hem of an underskirt that has fallen almost to her waist. She can feel his eyes move up her legs like a physical touch and hears it like a whip – _Mine, she’s mine, that body is mine_ each _mine_ snapped out of his thoughts, visceral and sharp and unstoppable and then, as if this was not enough he thinks – _I’ll kill – I’ll kill anyone who touches her –_ She smiles and looks at him as fixedly as she can from upside down, but oh god she has to press her legs together at the way each _mine_ shudders through her, clenching in a pulsing point between her legs and she tries not to wriggle too much but his lip twitches and she knows he’s noticed and _damn_ she was going to be kinder than the words that lash out of her end up being.

“I suppose I’d done something terribly naughty.” She narrows her eyes; smile flickering like a moth in the light – “Thankfully it was at the height of the Judoon mating season and I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Can you imagine, Doctor?” she turns again, cocking her head to one side, watching him both coyly and predatorily as he hovers somewhere half between her and the door, balanced between fight and flight but attempting to restrain himself from doing either. She can hear him trying not to breathe differently, feel him try to keep his heartbeat level, trying not to believe her, not to care, not to look at her. Oh she’s almost glad he’s trying to resist her; the breaking game is so much fun.

“How many are there in a platoon of Judoon? Twenty? Thirty maybe? I suppose I lost count – they were everywhere, and every one of them better than you.”

She pauses to hear him swallow a hiss. Waits for him to tell himself this is _ridiculous._ It _is_ ridiculous, she can hardly believe he’s falling for it, but she weaves the narrative together until if he looked into her mind for the truth of it – and he is looking, pushing at the edges of her - she can feel it – he would see it half formed there, almost like a memory –

“It really was the most incredible fuck-fest; a veritable orgy of rhino cock, and let me tell you those things are _huge._ I wasn’t walking straight for weeks, still get a  bit wriggly when I think about it, every single hole filled, all at once some of the time, can you see it?” she asks it as though she’s offering him a nice cup of tea.

“Can you please just _stop?”_

”Not for a thousand years.” She smiles far too pleasantly. “And now I’m wondering, dearest –” She sits up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and slouching forward as she looks at him cuttingly – “What you’d hate more – to imagine I entered in on such a scene willingly or by force.” Because it occurs to her she _knows_ him, knows he could justify his anger, his urge to destroy if anything had been done to her that she had fought against; but that the thought of her enjoying anyone but him makes him sick somewhere deep down where he could never for a moment excuse himself his rage. There really is nothing she loves more than testing his morality, all the more when test results show him to be far from the good person he would like to be.

“That’s it,” he says – “I’m gone,” and he walks out leaving her grinning, kicking her legs a little before jumping up and darting over to the wall, scrawling a chart upon it where she writes up: _Missy: 2, The Doctor: 0._

-x-

 **Sorry for the delay with this one, rubbishy and time consuming life things happened but we should be back on schedule now and hopefully better than schedule cause I'm making the next few chapter of this my campnano project :-)**  

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

“What is _that?”_ he asks, already in tones of exhaustion, the next day, waving a tired arm at the wall chart.

“That?” She looks up from the floor, pushes her sunglasses down onto her nose and sets down the pens she’s been amusing herself scribbling on the floor with – “That’s how many rounds I’ve won so far.”

“I wasn’t aware we were at war.”

“Oh Doctor, you scald me, so harsh – this isn’t _war_ it’s just a _game.”_

“Your problem, Missy, is you wouldn’t know the difference – if I asked nicely, is there any chance you would put some more clothes on?”

“I want some spray cans,” she says, ignoring him, pushing herself up to sit cross legged on the floor. Warily he joins her, sitting a few meters from her and looking down with a sigh at her attempt at an enormous and colourful graffiti that reads, _“Theta Sigma Stinks.”_

“Why? So you can do _Lungbarrow Loser_ next? What’s the theme – nostalgia?”

“Something like that.” She wipes her hands on what had been a white underskirt but has turned pink, blue and purple from the ink around her. She can _feel_ how intensely he is trying to ignore that fact that the skirt is all she is currently wearing – “I’ve been feeling whimsical. Remembering the good old days. You know.” She lies back on the floor, stretching, pushing her sunglasses back up, stretching and running inky hands upwards over her breasts leaving smears of blue and purple on her skin, looking down only when she feels him looking and giving a little shrug – “I’m a work of art,” she murmurs – Anyway – _you_ remember – when we were all young and innocent and fucking like bunnies all over Gallifrey, hoppity hoppity skip, running around in the long grass and fucking in it when we fell down; I’m surprised the sky above us never heard us scream.”

There’s a pang in her heart that she hides from him but she doesn’t care, she’ll hurt herself happily if it means he hurts too, if it means he wants her harder, suffers greater. But it’s almost hard to do – to drag out the memories held tight between her hearts like dragon’s treasure, precious, almost sacred memories – and throw them in his face like dust, waste scraps of nostalgic effluvia that she does not want, let alone holds dear. He sighs. She can almost hear him stacking up the blocks as he tries not to feel her words; she knows he cannot help but hear –

“Can you please stop saying _fucking?”_

“Fucking. Fucking fucking fucking. Fuck, fuckety fuck fuck fuck – all over Doctor, under the sky, up against the walls, curled up in bed, that one time under the table at my father’s house. In the middle of evening ceremony. You weren’t afraid to come to me then when you wanted me, were you, weren’t afraid to let me know how hard you were for me, how much you needed me to do something about it, and I did, every time, hungry little thing, quite insatiable, desperate even –”

“Like you were any different!” he splutters, instantly regretting it, she can tell.

“Oh look, he engages!” she raises her eyebrows jubilantly. “No. No I don’t suppose I was. I was just better then at hiding it than you were.”

“And that was the only time you ever were.”

  
“Oh please.” She rolls her eyes, realizes he can’t see her do it with the shades on, lifts them onto her head and rolls her eyes again – “You’re atrocious at hiding things dearest, now more than ever. Can’t manage a thing, not even with the increasingly more tailored cut of those trousers. Dearest, I notice _everything._ ”

“Is this it, then?” he snaps – “Is this how we spend the next millennia? You using every trick in your grand repertoire to bait me into fucking you?”

“Oh you said _fucking,_ how nice. Anyway –” she snorts. “Like it’s going to take even a portion of a millennia. I give you a week.”

“Is that a bet?”

“What do I get if I win?”

“Fucked.”

He looks at her. She looks at him. They laugh. He lies on his back beside her, and for a moment they stare at the ceiling together and it almost feels friendly, almost like the game she is pretending it all is. She wishes then, for the first time, that he would take her hand, but he doesn’t and she does not reach.

_(She wonders now what it was she was afraid of – was she afraid he would take her hand or afraid that he would not? Why did he not, in spite of everything else, ever take her hand? In spite of everything they did later, how long it went on, how terrifyingly intimate it got – he would not take her hand in his, not right up until that day on the TARDIS, the day she heard the music, the day it flooded her heart with tears and even then she had thought he still would not. When she reached to him he backed away from her as if afraid and it hurts her to think of him not wanting (not daring?) to take her hand after all this time. She hopes to all the powers it was because he was afraid of all it might mean, all it could lead them to – that once surrendered there could be a hope for them. She hopes to hell and heaven he was afraid to hope, not afraid that there was no hope. And yet – her hand tingles as though in gloves of ice to think of how they never got that far, not for all the tenderness and all the savagery, not for all those later days crying and shaking in his arms and he would do anything and everything for her- everything but that -)_

She loses her bet, but honestly she can’t really mind, it doesn’t feel like losing when the game is such a good one and his fight to keep his corner is so visible and raw; and – after all – she can be patient on this, she has time enough to burn. Honestly it feels good and it feels even better to think of it that way _– time to burn –_ it feels wicked and awful, burning away time like burning away planets, just as ghastly and so just as satisfying; the last of the Time Lords wasting their time so sublimely. It’s almost like blasphemy, then, haven’t they always blasphemed like this? Time enough these days to dwell in memory, to remember the long days and nights they stretched out until they snapped, running away from duty and procedure, throwing tradition and ceremony to the winds and escaping into a world they were trying to build without even quite knowing they were doing it, one that embraced triviality and sensation, beauty and feeling –all the things the Academy tried so hard to drill out of the young. But they – they just could never sit still back them, neither of them, it was such a great chunk of what tied them together - the urge to run and run together, hand in hand, they were always hand in hand. ( _And oh she thinks, but that’s it, that’s it isn’t it?)_ and she thinks – it shouldn’t be possible to run so fast and so free with someone else’s hand in your own, there should always be some difference in pace and movement but there wasn’t, not for them not ever, always so in sync, running, fighting, playing, fucking –

And now this stillness, but it does not feel still and she gives herself the credit for that, for playing him still and even though they’re at odds, almost at war, there’s something still so fluid in all the steps of this dance, synchronic if not exactly harmonic.

Every day, he says he’ll stop coming back; not saying it out loud, but implying with every movement how little he can take of her continued baiting – and she knows he’s burning up with it – all that lust and frustration getting in the way every second he’s not with her, not to mention when he is, she can feel it – everything he does with her name on the tip of his mind, spilling from him aloud sometimes when he thinks her mind isn’t firmly watching his. It always is, _always,_ silly Doctor not to know. Every day he says he’ll stop and every next day he comes back all the same and she hits him with one of her multiple choice attacks each time – swerving easily between offering herself quite blatantly to painful “casual” reminiscence; from assurances of her current innocence to vicious renditions of her conquests. It leaves him screaming on the inside in confusion and fury and want, above everything always want.

Sometimes they even talk.

“You know we have an opportunity here,” he tries one day, about three weeks in, and she watches him with an eyebrow raised from the sofa he installed – “All the time we’ve never had to talk, to work out – everything – you’re really going to waste that by focusing on –”

He makes a weak gesture that attempts to take in her previous half hour and two weeks of torturous endeavor, all the words she does not quite whisper in his ear and all the horrors that come out of her mouth – not to mention her present complete nakedness across the sofa.

“Oh I wouldn’t call it a waste,” she drawls lazily – “I’d call it all sorts of things but not a waste. Besides I think we have something that needs working on right here –” she makes a mocking mirroring gesture that takes in her entire naked self and his still quite obvious erection.

“You want to get talky? Fuck me first and get it out of the way.”

“It won’t _work –”_ he groans through gritted teeth, he’s on his knees beside her sofa – and there’s no part of her doesn’t love that- and he yanks her head back by the hair and she grins through the pain of it because damn but this is _progress!_ He pushes her down by the shoulder when her body arches under that yank to the head and she can feel him wanting to shake her, wanting to hurt her but so painfully aware of her nakedness that he knows where it will lead – “Damn you, you know I could never just have enough and stop –” he stops before he says _wanting you_ and she could laugh so hard at his desperation not to say it when there is nothing more obvious in the world. But he has to lean over her to push her down and she can feel the current pulsing in his palm as he jerks his hand to stop it from running the entire length of her, touching her everywhere like he wants to touch her everywhere – lay claim to every inch of this new beauty, leave his mark like he has left it on all the others. He is seconds from the easy motion of mounting and taking her and finding or losing himself inside her and she knows he does not know which he is most afraid of. She knows too that he’s not lying, that there is no way giving in and having her would satisfy anything or let them move on, a thousand years, she ought to know that by now. She can see him shaking when he tears himself away.

The next day he walks into the vault to her on her back with a vibrator between her legs, whimpering and screaming his name. Even when he closes his eyes he can still see it, even with his eyes closed she can feel him staring and she restrains herself from uttering a victorious cry of _Bingo! Perfect timing!_ She’s not really in the mood to be flip today, she’s stalked and circled enough, wanted long enough and she’s sick of it, however fun it’s been.

“So I’ll just –” he mumbles – “I’ll just be –” and he turns for the door but she’s there, like a dart – which was harder on the legs in their current slightly weaker state than she’d ever admit but she can move with improbable speed when she needs to and she’s between him and the door and he’s staring at her in faint bewilderment that she’s actually fully dressed this time which given her activities seems bizarre all the more, considering her past weeks experiments with further and further nakedness, but she can also feel a sort of resignation and lack of surprise and cannot decide if she’s glad or sad that he’s getting used to her.

“Oh no you don’t –” she snaps, her tone lighter than the look in her eyes – “Not this time.” She presses a hand between his hearts and walks, driving him back towards the edge of the bed, and she can feel the mad thump of their beating; it feels like she could curl up her hand and there his heartbeat would be, coiled up inside her fist and hers, only ever always hers. He sits down with a jolt and she takes her hand away. She prides herself on how little – of it all she has touched him since those first two days – all the more to make it clear that she has not needed to. 

“Sit,” she snaps and he does with a jerk as the back of his knees hits the edge of the bed.

“I’ve been waiting _very_ patiently,” she says, hands on hips, like this is a lecture – “But sometimes a girl gets tired of waiting so long for a chap to admit a basic truth and since you won’t tell me what you want I’m going to have to tell you myself –”

“Missy don’t –”

“Don’t _Missy don’t_ me, it’s getting very blah blah blah. Now shut it and let me blah blah blah.” She drops the stance and with it any lightness to her tone, drops to her knees and looks up at him until he cannot look away; and true, she’s never been able to hypnotize him but that does not mean he could ever look away once eye contact has been made, and he’s trapped and she knows it and never has a gesture of supplication been so used to assert dominance.

“You want me,” she hisses, nothing more than the lightest hand on his knee, but her eyes are on fire with pure filth and malice – “You want me so much you can’t bear it. I can _feel_ it Theta so there’s no point denying it.” There is shock in his eyes, and she knows it’s more at the “casual” name drop than anything else, that one word telling him so much more than she need vocalize for having said it – that he’s always wanted her this much, that he’s never been able to hide it, that she knows every thought he’s had, every ache he has felt, every fantasy he’s had since they were children and that yes, that includes the past awful weeks. It does not mean she does not intend to enumerate them all the same.

“It’s like a real ache isn’t it? How much you want to touch me? I know you’ve been whacking off every time you leave and more than every time you leave, thinking about me, all the things you’d like to do to and with me, but honestly mostly to me, am I right?”

She does not give him time to reply and is not sure that he would or could even if she did.

“You want to fuck me until you’re at peace again, however many times it takes, and you know it could be so many, again and again over so many days. You want to hold me down and feel like you’re forcing me, sometimes you wouldn’t care if you really were. You think about it every night and every morning with your hand around your cock, don’t you? How much you want every sense you have to be flooded with me, taste and feel and sight and smell, you wonder how different it will be to all the other times, how different I might be, if I still fall for the same tricks, if I would guess what you wanted, wat you needed as quickly as I always have, you want to know if this body fits this body as much as we’ve always fit together and you almost know we will but you don’t know it quite enough to be satisfied.”

She leans her head on her hand on his knee, looking up at him with wide interested, calculating eyes that she knows he can’t escape, and though he looks back at her with almost as much hate as lust she notices that he does not make any attempt to try and move away or move her away either.

“You want to hurt me,” she says, her continuation merciless, her tone factual; it does not need to be anything else – “It’s one of your favorite fantasies. You want to know how far you can go, how much I can take, if I’m weaker in this body than any of the others. You’re worried it’s sexist of you to think that – and it is by the way – but you don’t care that much. You’re just desperate to get your cock in all the holes I’ve never had before. Okay to be fair there’s only the one different one. Anyway. You’ve wondered how I’ll sound, how I’ll look under you, or over you, you’ve thought about me loving it and you’ve thought about me fighting you – oh yes you have don’t give me that face – you like that one almost more than if I didn’t, you’ve always wanted the fight, always feared what you’d do if I ever actually meant it. Doesn’t matter, you’ve thought about it all the same, thought about it long and – heh – long and hard. Sometimes you say my name out loud when you come on your own and I _hear_ it Doctor, I’ve always heard it, long before these days, wherever I was across the universe I knew when you were touching yourself thinking about me, I could _feel_ it, your pleasure, your pain because I wasn’t there, like you were scratching it into my skin. You can close your mind to me all you like – you can try – but I’ll still feel what you feel and when you think of me I’ll know – down to the last and worst thoughts you’ve had. Some of them are _sooo_ bad too, aren’t they? And that’s really why you stay away isn’t it? You’re afraid. You’re afraid of who you are when I’m around, of what you could do to the universe and to me, you want to tear me apart from the inside out and you know that once you started you couldn’t stop until the whole cosmos was torn to pieces. Go on, it’s your turn, tell me I’m wrong.”

She looks up at him with chilling cold in her eyes for all the heat of her words, and though her voice has smiled and mocked him there is no trace of a smile in her eyes and he closes his, shaking, certain his heart beat can be heard clanging round the vault. She’s stripped him naked and more, peeled back his skin and exposed two miraculously still beating hearts – _both of them yours,_ like she said to him in the first minutes they met. She was always so much more honest than he was even when she let that honesty masquerade as lies and disguise. He hates her, he wants her, he needs her and more – and the more is worst of all. He’s been running from it all his life. He stands up sharply, brushes her roughly aside, but she flows with it, standing, staring at him, though he refuses to look at her, fists clenched tight half way to the door. She wonders (expects) him to make a run for it like he always does, but he turns and looks at her, icy- hot and furious –

“You’re not wrong,” he says, bitterly – “Not a single word you’ve said is wrong. But you knew that, of course. Are you happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” she folds her arms across her chest, unsure why she feels angry when she’s winning.

He nods a quiet _hmm_ to himself –

“You win.”

 “Not yet dear, not quite.”

“I _can’t_ –” she wonders why the despair that flutters darkly in his eyes gives her no satisfaction – “I won’t. I’ve gone this long without breaking, without descending into what you want me to be – I’m not going to break now.”

“You have no idea what I want.” It’s a mess – she can feel the mess of his thoughts, of her thoughts entangled like different coloured threads into one big messy ball _he thinks I want him evil, he thinks I want him to break because what? Because then I’d win? Because I want the sensations? It’s not untrue but it’s not – that’s not important and that’s not what he’s afraid of most, why won’t he ever say, he never says, - I just want – that’s what he’s afraid of, the strength of it – it’s scared him since he was small – I just want – no dear lord I’m not that pathetic – I am I am that pathetic – I just want him to love me. Oh._

And his thoughts – she can pick out some of the threads from the mess of her own, like a maze of distracted incomplete longing and lies and necessity –

_I could just – we could just – why does it always have to hurt? Why can’t I just tell her this one thing? Why do I have to fall, to break, to tear the world apart, just her, just them always and they’d take it, they’d want it, I wouldn’t have to be all of that – I could just – it would be so easy to just and I can’t when I love – I love – I love –”_

He stares at her in all his nakedness and she stares back and with everything stripped away it’s like they’re children again staring at each other in wide eyed wonder at all these feelings and where they could lead, all the good and the bad of it. He takes one unsteady step towards her before turning –

“I’m sorry,” he says,” I’m so sorry,” and throws himself out with a jerk through the doors. She knows, walking in the direction he just took, that he’s stood there on the other side of the door, shaking, almost crying, one hand around his cock, and it takes him _seconds_ and when he comes he turns and leans his forehead against the door to the vault and whispers that incomplete prayer, that groaning sigh –

“ _Missy.”_

She sighs and presses her forehead to the other side of the door and just for a moment that door is every awful thing in their world and she thinks – _we slept like this, forehead to forehead cradled in one nest, dreaming the same dream, all those threads streaming through our heads in a  perfect rainbow of colourful harmony and sweet sweet noise and now what?_

 _“Theta,”_ she answers him in an echoing whisper dragged up from the chest. But she knows that he hears it and that he knows her prayer is better than his.

__x__


	6. Chapter 6

 

**6.**

She starts to hate him in the days that follow. More accurately, she supposes she falls in hate with him all over again. It’s happened so many times, after all, and almost always in his absence. There is little that brings the hate on more than that, little she ever hates him for more than being elsewhere. There is perhaps at least a little comfort in knowing that he at least is not with anyone else- knowing otherwise has made her hate him even more so many times in the past. Still she feels as though she has spent too substantial a part of the last eight hundred years cursing him for the coward he is. Irritation and isolation make her bored and in her boredom she hates him more and more each minute, until she’s close to gnashing her teeth with it, literally scribbling invectives into the walls, writing out plan after plan to kill him/ make him suffer/ hurt him/ combinations of all the above – until the vault is littered with balls of paper and the walls half black with scrawling. She hates and hates and hates and hates and wants until, by the time he eventually appears every cell in her body is raw with it, her nerve endings screaming with sensitivity and starvation.

But he comes like a storm breaking, trailing broken shattered stardust in his wake, and she could not have ever asked for more, not when she is the shore he breaks upon. He rages in looking like a man who has been through hell and come out with some of that fire blazing all around him. Nothing, in this moment, of any love he might almost have professed; just fury and hate and lust and she’s glad she was dressed today, glad to have made it harder for him, weak at the knees to have him need to rip into her dress because otherwise it could have been her skin and she thrills to know she did this and is delighted to find herself afraid – to have stripped him of all kindness, all gentleness, torn him right down to that basic core that will never be close enough until he’s crawled right up inside her and under her skin to take his place beneath her ribs, between her hearts.

He snatches at her like he’s about to be washed away, like he has crossed oceans of time and space to find her and yet hates that he has done, he’ll leave bruises in her flesh by morning but they’re bruises she’s been craving now for weeks and longer. They’ve been headed for this since regeneration, they always are, every time, but it feels too good and hurts too good to ever become predictable all the same. She’d been writing on the walls when he came in and he storms into her, pinning her against her words by the shoulders, no time even to object before he cuts off her cry with violent lips, twisting and pushing against her, her shoulders flaming with hurt in seconds and then his hands are in her hair, yanking her head back, pulling her hair, the tight pain of it heightening every other sensation- and she wants to kiss back but he barely gives her space or chance, hurting her lips and punishing her tongue for trying to move until all she can do is take it as the onslaught he intends, swallowing hard when he wraps a hand around her throat, long fingers tightening around her neck to make her choke – like he’d like to kill her, but he can’t that way, not with their biology and they both know it and they know they both like the idea of killing each other far more than they would like the actuality of it. Seconds in and she’s already lost track of their heartbeats – the pace of them and whose is whose, it’s like she can hear that mad rhythm in her head all over again. She can hear the noise of his head too, the rush of blood, the scrabbling to make words beyond _want, I want, I need, inside I have to be in her, never enough, never close enough –_ feel him pressing into her so hard like he’d like to be there by magic and dispense with all the terrible technicalities of clothing and she’s desperate – now she’s driven him to this to make it as difficult for him as she can, and she laughs in her mind and thinks _so much for respect_ even if she couldn’t care less, and he breaks off for a moment, both of them panting, to stare at her in disgust and slap her, without another thought, in the face. She widens her eyes in delight, grinning, face stinging –

“ _Well_ –” she says, desperate to mock him, to shame him, to fake a claim to shock and gender that she does not really feel, desperate to make it clear she’s reveling in her victory. He will not give her it; she supposes she cannot blame him.

“Not a word, Missy,” he hisses, breath hot and frantic in her face – “Not a single, solitary word.”

It hardly matters, it’s not like they’ve ever needed to speak to communicate anyway, or just to know what they wanted. She can’t even imagine getting physical with someone who could not read her mind or who’s mind she could not read; it seems rather gross to her, like having sex with a dummy. She wishes he would slap her again so as to feel that exquisite sting from both sides of her face, so he does. He wants her on the bed so she moves there, torn between wanting to put up a fight and having waited for this for too long, a different side giving in with every action as she vacillates rapidly back and forth. But she can feel him too, swinging back and forth between intentions and desires, wanting to hurt her, desperately not wanting to hurt her, relieved at having come to this and also furious with himself but no question any more, she notices, of _not._

She thinks about helping him as he scrabbles at her clothes, internally damning fastenings and the way they work or don’t work – and she thinks about hindering and in the end – trapped between the two – she does very little except remember to breathe when he strips her naked with furious hands that she can feel screaming to be on her skin, needing the feel of her too much to be stopped by buttons or hooks or respect. She smiles a taut hiss of a smile to see him stare at her a moment, stare at her tits before grabbing them and squeezing deliciously painfully, pinching the nipples until they’re rock hard and she’s gasping sighs with the edge of a scream in them. She can feel herself getting embarrassingly wet, smell it too and she knows that he can as well and he’s looking at her face as she whimpers, drinking it in like he’s been starved and she supposes they both have, though the way the other looks really has only ever been the faintest part of the attraction, it’s what they mean by their expressions, what the other’s touch sparks off in the soul that keeps dragging them together, eternally attracted soul to soul and bodies would be damned if they sensations they produced were not so incredible.

She strains against his touch, trying to arch into it, but he holds her down too hard and she squirms, pushes her shoulders down instead, wriggling as best she can and for a moment she hears him think how helpless she looks, how helpless she _is_ and it sends a jolt to his cock that he hates himself for, though it doesn’t matter anymore. She spits at him for calling her helpless even if it wasn’t out loud and bares her teeth when he slaps her for it, dragging him to her by the shirt front, making quicker work of his buttons than he made of hers. When she’s done he knocks her hands away and pins them both above her head in one hand, his fingers easily tightening around both wrists at once, and his other hand first pushes down on her jerking cunt and then grabs it, squeezing like he squeezed her tits, taking possession of her body like he’s been thinking about for weeks and she wants that more than anything, wants him to lay claim to her, to write his entire self into her skin in bruises. He snarls a soft intent –

“ _Mine,”_ and she tries not to think back _yes_ too quickly, but she does. He slaps her legs more widely apart and slides his fingers briefly in all the wetness of her before sticking two fingers roughly inside her and she cannot stifle her cry or the thought that spills out too quickly, too innocently, _don’t hurt me too much, I’ve never –_ and even though she snaps it back it’s too late and he stares at her and gives a grunt of a smile, and he stops just for a second but only because his whole body jerks with arousal and excitement, thrusting his fingers into her just as roughly but pressing his thumb straight against her clit as he does, and she gasps and fights back the urge to come ridiculously quickly and smothers it underneath thinking _my god how did you manage that so easily_ and he replies – to her surprise – _It’s you. I’ll always know my way around you._ In truth, from everything she’s heard and read she thought it would hurt a lot more. He keeps this up for no more than a few seconds before pulling back to unbuckle and take out his cock, pushing it into her hard and merciless and covering her body with his as he does, bending in to kiss her and swallow her screams, groaning into her mouth as though there is nothing he likes the taste of more than those cries.

This is what she remembers, how it’s always so different and so familiar, the feelings that the touch ignites even though the body is different again and again, not the same perhaps but always with the same set of similarities and memory (nostalgia?) So much stays the same – how it feels like the first time (it is, but it isn’t, either way it can be) how it always feels like it’\s been centuries, how it used to be the same even when it had been days or hours or sometimes minutes. How it was in those earliest years when sometimes minutes apart felt like a vastness of space. The way the physicality matters, even though they could do this in their heads if they wanted to, how they used to (she misses that, that’s asking too much) – but it _does_ matter, this frantic, half painful, entirely wonderful sensation of forcing their bodies back together (back? Yes it feels this way, not as though something is being mended, more like something being broken in reverse (same thing (no it’s not))). Oh it’s only a manifestation of the joining of souls, she knows that, but _only_ is very far from the right word for this.

She can’t blame him for the fury, for the savagery with which he fucks her; she wants it, feels it, would have fallen on him the same way if their roles had been reversed. Later she’ll wonder – and not for the first time - how their roles got set this way anyway, sometimes it feels like she could so easily have been the Doctor and the Doctor could have been her; personality maybe, fate (shrug), tricks of time and place and a million tiny actions? Somehow she knows none of this is quite true, that there’s something more that happened that she never could quite remember. Either way, she can be at least as savage as he is and he wants her to be, he must, because he lets go of her wrists so she can scratch red and sharp across his back and she does, echoing him in her head with her _tear you apart, get under your skin, hurt you, want you, am you, more always more._ And it’s more than just throwing their bodies together, it always has been and has had to be. They’ve always defied the dignity of their species, always reduced the last of their people down to one angry, biting, scratching, growling ball of animal lust and low pleasure – that’s how their elders would have put it, and they never cared, always reveling in the sensations they were supposed to have put away as trivial. Well then- wasn’t triviality the thing that had always drawn them together? Doesn’t matter; he’s selfish, always has been, coming too quickly, leaving her whining , shaking with his relief, feeling it flood her head as he floods her body but she’s holding on to him, won’t let him go and honestly it’s a relief to be able just to do this non metaphorically. Besides, he’s already ready and thrusting into her again, less angry, still just as needy, just as urgent, thumb at least back on her clit this time so that when he comes growling into her neck a second time she’s screaming with her head thrown back, seeing a sky that isn’t there. She wondered if she’d be a screamer this time, is pleased to discover her suspicions are correct.

She loses track of the number of times they fuck and honestly half of them just stream one into another with little rest and she knows why – rest would be dangerous – pausing to think or breathe or make real eye contact beyond just a furious drowning inside each other – it would be dangerous, might lead to intimacy, might have to lead to – god forbid – words. She understands that, understands that there are things they are ready for and things they aren’t, understands almost nervously (nervous? Her? Really? (yes)) that they might talk now, they really might have to, sometime in the next thousand years. But not now. This is need, this as she said, was what they needed to get through first, only problem is like _he_ said – they never quite get through it, sometimes they think they could fuck from the beginning to the end of time without pause and it wouldn’t be enough, they crave each other beyond love, such a silly word, no wonder she’d bitten that poor girl’s head off for it (not literally, though now she has the image).

Hours. It has to be hours. Half a night? She doesn’t know. There really are no days or nights down here. If she was human she supposes she would have had to give herself some sort of schedule just to stay sane, fragile things they are that need so specific a construct of time. But she isn’t human, and though she knows how long it’s been without recourse to any single – planet oriented time piece – it’s as unimportant as the specifics of the _thousand year_ sentence. Anyway their time lasts a night, lasts a moment, lasts a year, lasts forever, is gone in a flash. And through it all he does not speak and she does not ask and when in the end she sleeps he does not stay.

__x__


	7. Chapter 7

 

**7.**

She wakes up aching and bruised and happy about it. Her first thoughts and flashbacks make her smile and stretch and yawn, eyes bright and a smile flickering round her lips. She feels giddy, happy as a schoolgirl with a satisfied crush. She can remember every detail with greater clarity now than when it was happening; can feel his hands on her, finding her, marking her, squeezing cries of pain and pleasure from her with infuriating skill. She wonders that he can know her so well and still run away like he did. But her skin still sings and hurts sweetly from his touch, she still smells of him, still feels him inside her and it’s _perfect,_ as it should be, her head swimming and euphoric, ready to feel it all over again. The more she thinks, the less she can believe just how much they packed into one not-quite night, the less she can believe how easily he left, just picked up his clothes and went – it occurs to her briefly to feel used, and she does and then cannot decide if she hates or enjoys the feeling. In the end she switches simply to being angry, once again, at his absence. She searches, reaching out with her mind for his, but finds very little this morning – she assumes it’s morning – she supposes she _should_ get a clock or something after all, if only to better guess by it where he is at all times. Not that she cares that much. Anyway. Moving on.

She wonders if he’ll be back, _when_ he’ll be back. How it will be. Her body is too relaxed to feel the tension that dances through her mind, setting off fireworks with interest and concern and uncertainty and anger and still that low humming undercurrent of content. So she stretches and dozes, eventually getting dressed slowly and with more than usual care, not for him, not even because she cares, just because the ritual of it feels nice. Strange, the kind of rituals she enjoys now, after decades of being brought up to a pomp and circumstance they both hated (though he hated it more than she did, there were always aspects of it all she at least got off on even if she could not say she actually _liked_ it) – now her trappings lie in make-up and hair spray, buttons and hooks and herself as the subject of all ritual. It suits her this way.

She spends the whole day – if it is a day – she’s fairly sure it’s an earth day – gearing herself into not caring if when and how he reappears. She’s still busy aggressively not caring when he comes in and she’s draped across the bed reading _War and Peace_ backwards to try and see if it makes better chronological sense that way or has any more understandable kind of continuity.

She cares so little that she drops the book off the side of the bed, looks sharply at him, observes his awkwardness and the guilt and shame written all over his face, and jumps promptly to her feet and slaps him in it.

“Yeeeeah,” he says, still looking at the floor, rubbing his face and grimacing – “I suppose I deserved that.”

“You don’t know why though, do you?”

He knows better than to fall into the obvious trap.

“Tell me.”

“That’s for leaving.” She nods, slaps him again –

“And that’s for your stupid apologetic face.” He finally looks up at her, pushing through the difficulty of meeting her eye –

“After everything I did you’re mad at me for – leaving?”

“Only as per always.” She wonders if she really wants to get into this, decides she doesn’t and kisses him on the nose – “That’s for coming back.” She feels him almost vibrate when she steps into his space and realizes, not entirely with surprise, that he wants her, wants her quite hungrily  and that it’s adding to his shame and confusion and uncertainty as to why he _has_ come back, trying to tell himself he’s only here to apologise.

“Don’t you dare,” she says, ignoring the fact that he has not _said_ any of this. “Or I’ll slap you again, this time all the way out the door.”

“But I –” he looks at her carefully, looks at the bruises blossoming (beautifully) around her throat and wrists, knows they’ll be all over her, his fingerprints purple on her hips and breasts and thighs. She watches him in amusement while he tries to work out exactly how sorry he can be about this when the thought also makes him hard.

“Do you want to see?” she says, and he looks at her helplessly for a moment as though she might actually throw his morality a lifeline. Idiot.

“….Yes”.

This time he kisses her. This time he lets himself touch her, rather than just ripping his way in. This time he breathes a groan into her neck that promises words to follow. This time he pleads eloquent permission with his eyes before she nods and turns to the bed. This time he lets her take her own clothes off and she loses track of where it stops being permission and becomes her own form of torture to take her time. When she lingers too long, he still looks at her like he wants to hurt her and that’s fine. She smiles; that’s the idea. She reaches out a hand he does not take but mounts her all the same, throwing their discarded things to the floor and looking down at her wearing nothing but the faintest of silk undergarments that feels more exposed than wearing nothing at all and he revenges himself upon her for her slowness, sucking her nipples through the fabric until she’s almost crying, grazing them with his teeth until she _is_ crying and exposing her breasts with a savage yank that makes her breath hitch and her chest heave and she wishes she wasn’t this easy, that she could object with more honesty, but she never could. He looks at her with darkening eyes, eyes that take in all the bruises, the scratches, every mark he has made upon her that he now pushes into with cruel fingers, fingers that growl out _mine_ with every press –

“- you are,” he says, and she knows he does not mean to say it but he closes his eyes and groans it anyway – “ _Mine.”_

What a mess she is, she thinks, to have spent a millennia convincing herself and others that the last thing she wants to be owned, that she’s the one in control, in charge, the _Master._ What an absolute joke it is, because she only has to hear him say it for the thrill to run down her like an electrical current from the bursting top of her head to the tingling soles of her feet and it’s all she can do not to cling onto him whimpering _yours, yes yours_ into his shoulder. She holds out. For now. She knows it is only ever for now.

“Your…. _what?”_ she gasps it out with his lips on her bruises, owning each one, not healing them but imprinting them deeper into her flesh, each kiss a seal – _“_ Victim? Pet? _Prisoner?”_

“My –” she feels him physically shake back the urge to say what they don’t say, what she hasn’t heard out loud (oh but so often whispering like a tiny starved thing in a cage at the back of his brain where he locked it up after he first ran away, what he used to say so often and she delighted in hearing, not since their last days on Gallifrey on the far side of childhood – _Everything.) Everything_ he thinks but he can’t and he chokes on it – “ – prisoner, _yes,_ then, yes.”

“Excellent,” she says sarcastically, though she only half feels the sarcasm – “Bring on the handcuffs.”

“Shut up Missy,” he snarls, hating her, good, she wants him to hate her, she can live with that, hating her and prying her legs apart all at once, shoving his cock into her, if anything more urgently than before, she can feel the memory of how it felt singing through his skin and deeper, making more desperate for more than he was before he knew how it felt – “Damn you, just _shut up.”_ He slams into her hard, fast, repeatedly, if not more gently than before at least more capable of taking his time, intent half on his own pleasure, half on hurting or hating her or both, all, they go together. He pulls her head back by the hair, bites into the softness of her throat when he comes, she thinks perhaps he really could just rip her throat out, drown in her blood and keep fucking her, paint his name in bloody circles on her chest, fuck her into her next regeneration and never stop. She can read the images in his mind and digs her nails into his shoulders, crimson crescents in the skin in retaliation. She comes hard at the thought of his thoughts, getting off beyond measure on her fear of him.

He flips her onto her belly and she won’t be beaten like that, pushing herself up on her arms, even as he drags her back by the hips. He fucks her like an animal until her knees buckle on the point of orgasm and only after did she realize that this time it was shared, that they were screaming together, him collapsing over her, covering her, obliterating her, enfolding her like he wants to absorb her into him through the skin. When she can breathe again she wriggles out from under him, employing elbows and curses where necessary until he flops on his back, and twists like a lioness in a hunt, to look down at him with victorious eyes that treat him like prey and a smile that flickers in one corner viciousness and in the other with awkward fragility. She doesn’t give him time to ask what she’s doing before dipping her head between his legs, wriggling herself down between them to suck his cock back into hardness and then torment it with the tip of her tongue until he’s groaning and cursing, reaching his hands into her hair until they tangle there but she wrenches away and pins those hands back against the pillow by the wrists.

“Uh-uh,” she shakes her head, wriggling into a more upright position – “And nope,” – shifting up on her knees and bringing herself back down on his cock. She closes her eyes for a long moment simply to love the sensation; when she opens them again she cannot tell what best of all the wonderful aspects of this are – the feeling itself, or the way he looks at her – it makes her want to sigh and melt, his eyes are fixed on her like he worships her; it’s been a long time since she saw that look but she could never have enough of it, like she’s a goddess and he can barely believe in her – and then there’s knowing how she looks in his eyes. She can see the image of herself riding his cock, the brightness he sees in her eyes, the perfection of her shape and the beauty she never even noticed in her own face but which he cannot help but see. She had been satisfied by the way she looked this time but never reveled in it quite like she does now. She supposes however vain she may get, she will never see herself as quite as beautiful as he will see her. It never ceases to delight, halfway to intoxication, between that and his eyes and his cock she supposes she’s all the way there now, swimming in euphoria even before she comes and he watches her when she does like she’s a galaxy bursting into life above him and he’s thrusting up into her hard to be a part of it, clutching at her hips, eyes almost rolling with her hands around his throat and when he closes his eyes she can see the stars behind the lids as her explosion ripples through him and they’re travelling those stars together and she comes again and again, over and over thinking _this way we could, we could, we could see them all together –_ and he’s with her with every wave and she’s crying, wrung out and falling back down onto him when the ripples pass, falling as though from a great height. 

 _And that,_ she thinks right at him because she’s out of breath for words – _was an adventure in time and space._ He cannot speak either but she hears something in him laugh breathlessly and he holds onto her when she sinks oh-so-accidentally on purpose into the crook of his arm, curling up against him with her head on his shoulder. It’s cool here and she’s dripping sweat, pushing it out of her eyes and actually feeling it trickling into the roots of her hair. But she’s cooled all the same, if by nothing else than this temporary – she knows it’s only temporary – feel of calm.

He stiffens at first at this. This is new again. This is perhaps an intimacy he was not quite ready for and she knows it but is far from caring. She can hear gears turning in his head as he wonders how to act and she feels sure at least one of her hearts stops beating while she waits for it herself. Finally, oh so finally, he relaxes a little and puts an arm around her, shoulder almost fitting into the palm of his hand. _She’s so small,_ he thinks _Oh. So small. This life, all this life in my hands._ He can hear her heartbeats, she can feel it in his head, between that and hearing his it’s an echo of the drums all over again. She’s missed it. She hasn’t missed it. He’s thinking of the frailty of the situation, of her bones, of her breath, of the tightrope that they’re on, thinking of her as though she’s some gentle forest creature that’s laid it’s head in his lap, entrusting itself to him, a gift from some kind of nature god, his to protect –

“Oi!” she says, out loud – “Will you stop that? I am the Master and you will –” he rubs, gently pinches the back of her neck and she groans, yawns and stretches – “- snuggle me,” she finishes weakly, pushing her head into his shoulder like the soft nuzzling creature she was trying so hard not to be. He smiles, she can feel his face move with it, his fingers sliding into her hair to stroke her but getting stuck –

“Hair pins,” she sings to his inquiring hands – “You can take them out – if you like.”

Strange, she thinks, that her heartbeats speed up at this, when they had not really before – but this is almost like giving him permission to disarm her, she only realizes it after she has said it. Not that she’d even ever thought about murdering him with a hair pin – well that was a lie but – not _much_ anyway. He still does not say anything, she can feel his anxiety that anything he says might topple the trembling balance they have here, but he makes a faint (content? She thinks it’s content) _hmmm_ noise as he draws the first pin out of her hair and flicks it over the side of the bed. She feels a brief thud of interest to realise that he at least briefly sees this as a disarming as well. Still, after ten pins and her hair sill in exactly the same position she feels him scowl –

“Exactly how many hair pins are in here, Missy?”

“Heeeeeeee.”

“No, really. We only have a thousand years, you know.”

“Funny.”

“Am I?”

“No, not really. At least another ten dear, keep it up now.”

Somehow, this is all they need to open a door between them. She knew it. It was like she’d thought before, triviality had always been the thing that connected them, now it was the key to seriousness.

“So,” he says, his fingers once again working in her hair.

“So,” she echoes.

“So we’re doing this, then.”

“If by _this_ you mean sex, Doctor, then yes I do appear to have your come drying on my legs, which might be the teensiest indicator that coitus has occurred.”

“Oh god. Don’t say that.”

“Well it has.”

“No, don’t say coitus. Or come for that matter?”

“Boning? Fucking? Making bacon? Jizz maybe? Spunk? Organic mayo? Baby ba –”

“I am genuinely begging you to stop.”

“I’m stopped. Yes. Yes, alright we’re doing this. Next question?”

“What happens now?”

“You tell me Mr. President, you’re the one with the cell keys.”

“Don’t.”

“Oh, for the love of fuck – don’t _what?”_

“Don’t do that. Act like I’m the one in charge here.”

“You are.” She listens to him struggle to find a reply to that – “Aaaaand –” she continues when he inevitably fails – “More to the point, you love it.”

“I can assure you I don’t.”

“You get off on it. You don’t want to and you’re full of internal dullness and angst about how this makes you a bad person – but anyway you do.”

“I do not get off –”

“You dooooo. Now stop lying to me or I’m going to have to get angry and my legs are too floppy to get angry so don’t piss me off. Earlier you thought _She’s mine and she’s stuck here and I can have her any time I want_ and you loved it. Tell me you didn’t.”

He remains sensibly silent.

“Well done. You also thought, _Is this rape? If it is am I a bad man? Can I really define myself by what she makes me do –_ and theeeen you repeated that last part to yourself, the part about me making you do it. You thought and I quote _I can’t control myself around her, I never could, this is why I hate her, all my ideals thrown to the wind because I want –_ and then you got hung up for a bit just thinking _I want_ on a loop and then and only then did it occur to you that victim blaming might be a bad, bad thing.”

“And all of this leaves us where?”

“Fucking like bunnies in a vault from the looks of things.”

“Be serious. Just for once.”

“Later. There’s plenty of time. How _is_ that moral quandary going for you, Doctor?”

“Badly.”

“Honestly, does it really matter?”

“See that. Right there? That’s why we can’t be friends.”

It’s flip, the tone not wholly serious but there’s enough of him that means it for it to sting her far more than she expected it to. He feels her hurt and is instantly sorry. Not that his _sorry_ ever held much weight with her.

“Fine,” she says tightly –” noticing at the same time that his hands have stopped in her hair and that all the pins are out but that it has still barely moved a strand – “Then _what?_ If not friends?”

He raises an eyebrow –

“ _Does it really matter?”_ He’s cruel, but so is she and she sighs –

“Touché. Mind the floor when you run away next.”

He doesn’t. When he leaves – though this time it’s in the morning- she smirks into the pillow to hear him shout, shaking a foot full of pins.

__x__


	8. Chapter 8

**8.**

**“** So much for _respect,”_ she says when he comes back, not quite as soon as he’s through the door but somewhere between the first and last fucks in one of those quiet moments which she can see becoming increasingly dangerous for them. This time she’s lying on her back, not looking at him; he’s doing the same, she could never count the amount of times they’ve lain like this – only he used to hold her hand. They lie shoulder to shoulder, never voicing how unthinkable it would be not to be touching, but their hands never so much as graze fingers.

“I mean honestly – did you honestly think that was going to be a thing?”

“I was _trying.”_

“S’not what I asked.”

“I wanted –”

“But you didn’t.”

“I don’t know what I wanted,” he groans, half defeated.

“That’s not quite true either, is it? You wanted both – me and not me – you weren’t even sure which wanting would win. C’mon, you’re not _that_ stupid, you know how many things you can be at one time.”

“Stop figuring me out, it’s –”

“Unsettling? Because I’m always right? Anyway I don’t need to work you out, I _know_ you.”

“I’m a monster.” Flatly, not bragging, not entirely recriminating either.

“I know _that.”_

“Now I just want to keep you here and use you for my own pleasure. When I want. No matter what you want.”

She yawns, wriggling just a little –

“Oh please, are you trying to scare me or turn me on?”

“Same difference.”

“It’s really not. Besides, I knew that. Isn’t it what you always wanted?”

“Close enough,” he lies – “It’s what _you_ always wanted.”

“Shut up.” It’s truer for her than it is for him. He does not add _it’s what you were afraid of last time round, you wanted this too much, we came too close, you knew I’d have to take you prisoner to keep you, you’d never admit how much you wanted to be kept._ He tries not to think it but she picks up enough it from his head – “Shut up,” she says again. “And kiss me.”

He does.

_(She remembers those first few hundred years all at once; she can montage the memories and pull them out individually when needed. It occurs to her that the way it looks all together it looks as though he was always there and she supposes that’s a part of the big gap, isn’t it? That he wasn’t, that she spent long days, sometimes several in a row waiting for him (she wasn’t “waiting for him”)- she sneers away the thought, re-frames it however she can to make it different – she had things to do in those hours those days, schemes and adventures to be had without ever leaving the vault, especially after she got internet access. She scratches out of her mental vocabulary any idea that she might have missed the Doctor in his absence any more than she might have missed the sky. Well that, right there, that’s a story for a different time; her mind runs hurriedly on.)_

_She had things to do, there was more than enough inside her to fill the time, in a way she supposes it was true what he said about being a prisoner as much as she was, after all he was the one who had always really cared about adventure and travel, she (she would never have admitted it not even to herself, this one was buried too deep) but even when they were little and they had looked at the stars, oh yes it had been an exciting thought to visit; she’d have gone anywhere with him too, but really? Really, there was a core buried somewhere too deep down even for the boy she’d been to admit it – a core that could have settled down, that could have carried on forever just the two of them in the smallest of spaces, if he would admit her mastery of him, if she would have allowed him to make her better- (“You own me” he says, “You fix me,” they reply, all at once their whole existence validated. It never happens.) Anyway she is fine here, could settle for this, she misses nothing and there is nothing to miss._

_She wonders if there was meaning in it, all that brutal fucking, similar in so many ways to fighting, scratching and biting and slapping, like they could have torn each other’s skin off given time, pried their bones apart and slipped into the cracks; it was always like that, she couldn’t say she ever regretted it. Neither of them lied when they declaimed their hatred, when they whispered sweet savagery into each other’s ear. He couldn’t shame her and by the end of it she could not have embarrassed him. He discovered soon enough that the things which utterly humiliated her predecessors simply made her grin. He never even tried to bring her down with it, glorying in her domination as much as her submission, and she knew it was right, it was how they had always been, that her name or title in this context was only ever a joke, that he matched her, even beat her at times and always would._

_She wonders now what it meant for them, since they never dared discuss it, there was sex and there was lust and urgency and need and at other times tea and board games and triviality without the hint of the word “Relationship” even creeping into either of their heads. They were quick to repeatedly point out that none of this made them_ friends, _but entirely failed to consider what it did mean. She would take it that he wanted her and for then it was enough. It was easier. It might have been easier if they had stayed that way for a thousand years._

_But somewhere along the way it changed, and she thinks she can pinpoint almost exactly when – it was when, quite by accident, they started making love._

__x__

 

**Oops....just realised I've effed up royally and the original chapter 8 i posted was supposed to be chapter 9 so yeah.....that would have come out of context and made little sense, have rectified, will put this note on chapter 9 too, sorreeeee :-)**


	9. Chapter 9

**9.**

Somewhere in their third century, she remembers. It had started off as a normal day; she was reading on the sofa, he was reading on the floor beside her, idly running a finger between her legs at the same time. It’s the latest kind of normal, though it’s maybe – and they will certainly neither of them be the first to admit it or even allude to the idea of it – just maybe that things have become more _companionable_ than they have been. No, that’s not a good word; an awful word, the more she thinks about it, but then _friendly_ isn’t good either, so she supposes it will have to do. It’s amazing how long they’ve managed to keep this up without ever really talking, even when there’s so much they know needs to be worked through. They’ve done nothing, just fucked and played and bantered and shared space. It’s been almost nice, really, and everything hanging unspoken between them has just fired the tension, kept them shivering with it, all those words bursting on the tip of the tongue before being drowned in screams.

It’s been one of the good evenings – there have been so many different kinds; the kind that start and end with sex, the kind that end before they’ve begun because she’s angry and orders him straight out, the kind that start in arguments and end in sex, the kind that start in arguments and end in arguments and he leaves and she – oh she’s trashed this place so many times, shrieking and wild and barely aware of herself, unsure where the fury comes from and where it’s going, if it’s this place, this situation or everything else. He does not know how to deal with her when she’s like this so he does not try, and she does not blame him, but then he leaves and she blames him for that, adds it to the list. Some nights they try to talk and all they do is snap, other times she has nothing to say.

This has been one of the other ones; the ones that start with snacks and smiles, gentle insults and, on this occasion, chess, he won the first one, her the second; the best way – neither of them are natural losers. Since then she’s been reading and giggling (sometimes laughing out loud, it’s been so much fun) over _Crime and Punishment_ (she’s been loving the Russians for the last three hundred years) and he’s been side-eyeing her and reading travel magazines – which worries her faintly, partly because she wonders if it means he’s looking to leave and also because she can hear him occasionally wonder if she’d like to journey with him in his mind. She remembers that; it was a game they used to play as children – reading about places and then visiting them in their heads, creating the world from what they knew and their shared imagination, adding details onto what was real to create fantastical places they could run around in in their heads hand in hand, fictional creations more real to them than the source material. She can hear him remembering now, feel him quite accidentally reach his mind to hers and her own flutters back automatically in his direction before she stops it every time. This is promising, enticing, so very tempting and utterly dangerous.

Finally he stretches, folds a magazine, adds it to the pile and intensifies pressure against her clit, running two fingers down and pushing them into her easily. She bites her lip so that nothing more than a choked _Mmm_ sound comes out, and forces herself to finish up the last ten pages.

“Good?” he asks, eyebrow raised as she puts the book down and she knows it’s the book he’s referring to.

“Hmm,” she huffs – “Disappointing. He chose redemption”. Something niggles her about it; she supposes she ought to have found it funnier. He feels the niggle like a scratch in his own brain and does not push her, not yet.

“Shocking.” Flatly, other things on his mind. She moves her legs so there’s room for him at least partially on the sofa, the Doctor just moving up her body to kiss her. She frowns when he does but his eyes are closed and he does not see – it’s different this time, maybe. Maybe she’s wrong, maybe she’s mistaking laziness for tenderness; she’s done it before and this has been a sleepy sort of day not lending itself to the usual viciousness. She can hear her own heartbeats in her ears – she tries not to do that, too reminiscent of another life and a trial that’s now behind her. She almost wants to fight this like she never fights violence, to push him away and yell _no, what are you doing, get off, that’s disgusting!_ She remembers feeling this a lot two lifetimes ago and god knows how many Doctors now – that one was always sweet, so often leaning towards sentimentality, like a big golden puppy, even she never had the heart to push him off her lap. 

But this one’s not like that, he’s not _sweet,_ he’s rarely gentle, but _eh,_ she shrugs internally; if she can be capable of accepting it maybe he _can_ be capable of tenderness. Interesting. She supposes she will never stop being interested in the both of them and what they conceal, what they are capable of, she doesn’t know herself any more than him and maybe him better. Maybe he’s the same; maybe he knows her better than she does, perish the thought. Besides she can feel his mind, not in words so much as a feeling, urging her not to question this, a gentle wordless thrum of energy that just says _let it be Kosch, let it be._ She does, she fights through herself and kisses him back, her hands draping loosely round his neck, fingertips stroking up the top of his spine. If nothing else she does hear that name in the warm haze of his thoughts and the only fight she ends up putting up is a soft _don’t call me that_ that she is not even quite sure she means.

It feels as though they kiss for a long time, and that’s good, in the moment of it she’d be happy if they could hang suspended like this in the amber of their own energies; she can taste the artron on his lips, feel it crackling under his skin, smell it in his blood. They could always smell each other out across time and space, as close as this it’s dizzying. When he stops she knows why, can feel the reason pushing against her thigh, can feel his ache as much as her own and just now, like this, it’s making her feel a millennia younger, almost innocent again, as if she ever was.

 _You were,_ he thinks, _I remember._

She can’t form words, not even in her head, but the heart of her cries _hush, please hush_ and he does and when she sees him looking at her she’s terrified by the manner of it, far more than when he’s furious. He hasn’t looked at her like this since – she won’t think about it, he’s right, just let it be (She _can’t,_ she will, she does) – but she remembers, _hush_ she tells herself, _please hush_ and she does. His hand rests on her chest between her hearts and it belongs there, _he_ belongs there, he always has, between her hearts or holding them both in his hand, she wonders if she will ever again be as honest with him as in that very first lie – _my hearts are maintained by the Doctor._

He unbuttons her slowly, kissing his way down each new inch of exposed skin, like he’s never seen her before, like he didn’t make every stripe and bruise and cut in her flesh. With kisses like those she could almost believe it.

“I want,” he says.

“I know,” she replies, and she tries to forget how many times they have had this exchange over the centuries. Her lips are burning with things that she could say, her tongue tingling around sweetness that strives to escape her and will not and when she looks at him she can see he’s burning with it too. It feels like she’s been trying her whole life, all the lives, not to feel too much, never looking too hard for fear that she’ll see and the sight will touch her too deep and now it’s like she’s wobbling at the edge of something that threatens to tear her down and if she feels one thing, sees just one thing she will have to see and feel everything and the brightness will overwhelm her. Or maybe she’s wrong – maybe she’s been walking side by side with something too dark for too long and she’s afraid of what she’ll be without that shadow. Curse it though, this is not the time for introspection; she reaches back for him and he fills the place where that shadow falls, where it took her hand when his slipped away. She _wants_ too – she cannot say what she wants like he can, so this will do, this is good, however frightening, this tenderness.

This time there’s something more in every touch, when he strokes along her inner arm because he knows it makes her almost purr, arching and keening, whimpering at that merciless caress – something in his hands that comes from so deep inside they’re neither of them ready to name it though they know what it is, oh yes they do, as much as they will continue to deny it for another five hundred years. That dreadful, terrible, unspeakable thing. She wants him inside her, needs him closer, she can feel his mind reaching tentatively towards her like it has not reached in so very long, not really, not when all the threads of mind and thought and feeling uncurl at the edges and reach out to allow themselves to be entangled with hers. They used to do this all the time, it was so easy then. She wonders if it’s all the nonsense that’s grown between them or if some things are just easier when you’re little. Anyway, his threads are loosely curling around the edges of hers when he spreads her legs, though she falls apart so smoothly he barely has to touch and now there’s a way in which the physical does not matter because this, binding these tattered threads back together is so much more; but it does matter because she needs, so desperately needs them to be linked in every way, to forget which of them is which they’re so tangled together. She opens her mouth to say _please oh please,_ but he won’t let her, not this time, though over the years he’s reveled in making her plead with him, eked out those whimpers and tormented her for it. This time he stops her with a brush of a mental finger to her lips; _hush no don’t it’s alright_ because they’re equal – it’s like he remembers it for the first time in a long time, _really_ remembers it and so will not allow her to ask him for what is not given or taken, only shared and he’s in her in an instant and her entire being sings in relief.

He’s so gentle she can hardly bear it, it pushes on the part of her that wants to kill him it’s so hard to take, at the same time it’s urgent, almost frantic, pressing and pressing to be deeper inside her and she’s clutching back and if her body could just swallow him up she’s sure she would. She wonders (like when  she was a child, that stupid whimsical fantastical thing) if they’d been loomed wrong from the beginning, the same stuff that made them strung across two when it should have all gone into one. For a moment she can see her own eyes in his eyes, can see them in his head, because he’s looking, searching her face like she’s searching herself – she can see her own eyes so wide and blown and questioning and he answers her not in words but a wash of muddled feelings breaking against her – she can feel that her eyes stab him, feel pain there and the intensity of pleasure and they’re a blissful mess, those two. There’s guilt in him, she feels it, like he’s opened a door he works so hard to keep closed around her- oh, just a crack but he’s even thinking it _I’m sorry I’m so sorry –_ and it’s not about sex, it’s not about this whole dynamic, not anymore, far deeper than that, she reaches hard to see what it is he could possibly have to feel so guilty about it but it evades her, it always has. Still that door is opened a crack and it’s enough to give her at least the clue – that there is something, something he’s known for a long time now that he won’t – that he _can’t_ share with her - _ever since Perfugium_ he thinks and that’s all she catches and it makes no sense and the door closes with a slam leaving her only frowning but too caught up in the rush of all those other feelings to stop – nostalgia and need and anger and attraction and that other one, always underneath it all that fucking other one, the one she shares – well she shares them all – the one they don’t name.

He kisses her as he moves inside her, kisses her to hide his eyes from her and hers from him and she’s almost pathetically grateful for it.

In her mind she calls him _Theta_ and in his he calls her _Koschei_ and quivering and trembling they let each other hear it, offering up these forbidden fruits like they are meeting for the first time, far more shyly than if they even were.

_(“Do you even know who I am?”_

_“Ugh – a pompous pain in the arse?”_

_That pause where the one boy stares at the other in fascination and disgust, delight and affront._

_“I’m not sure anyone’s ever spoken to me like that in my life.”_

_“Yeah well get used to it.”_

_Too shocked to reply he had just punched the boy, leading them into the second fist fight of the afternoon, she remembers it, feels it even – the exhilaration, the pain, the rush, the closeness, the recognition of each other somehow that they both knew even that day would keep them coming back._

_“Enough?”_

_“No I don’t think so, not ever.”_

_“Are you….enjoying this?”_

_“Oh so are you, admit it.”_

_Looking at him narrow – eyed and starting to smile, when the other boy smiled back it was like the sun coming out, catching silver in the leaves and_ Oh, _he thought_ Oh shit.

_“Do this a lot, do you?”_

_“What?”_

_“Start fights with your betters.”_

_“Betters, my arse – and no, just you.”_

_“I’m honored. Koschei.” He put out a hand – “Koschei of House Oakdown to you.”_

_“Theta Sigma, house Lungbarrow.”_

_Mischief and sunshine and lightning in their smiles then and when Theta took his hand they held that lightning crackled in their palms and_ this _he thought,_ Oh yes, this forever please.)

It’s still there, the lightning, crashing around them and shaking them and she’s crying when she comes and the name he groans out into her neck is _Missy_ and her whisper is _Doctor_ but it’s close, somehow it’s so close. She can feel her chest shake with her breathing and she’s still crying, holding onto him and he’s holding onto her and wriggling awkwardly into a positon on the sofa where he can lie and hold her against him and he feels so still, just like his mind has always felt still, has always filled her with his stillness when she needs it even if it’s not quite true, if he makes himself calmer just to help her, she knows he does because his face isn’t dry either.

She buries her face in his shoulder, wondering even now if she can pretend she’s not crying, even though that’s ridiculous, even though he doesn’t care, likes it even, which she wonders isn’t rather callous on his part or maybe not, maybe it’s quite the opposite because he _cares;_ she can hear it in his heartbeat, feel it churning in his head, though it’s hard to make out thoughts now, still she can feel the threads of her thoughts still weaving into his, his curling back around hers, needy and protective; she knows if they keep this up they might even mend, might become as locked mind to mind as they used to be and it’s tremendous and incredible to think it.

She wants to speak, there’s so much she wants to say, to ask, but she’s afraid he’ll retreat if she does and she’s more afraid of that than she could ever even think to herself. It’s so typical, ironic even that he has the opportunity to leave, that she does not; it’s the hardest part of being here – perhaps in all honesty the only really hard part – that she has to see him go away again and again to a part of his life that does not include her. She’s never been alright with that, she’s not sure she ever could be. So she doesn’t speak, almost holds her breath, because it’s nice to be here, to feel his heartbeats, to have him stroke her shoulder and kiss the top of her head. She always knew how wonderful the little things were, so wonderful they could not really be called little at all.

Finally, after a meaninglessness of time, he’s the one who speaks and he asks her if she’s alright.

“Am I –” she begins, in incredulous echo but she stops because she does not want him to mock her for it, to give her back a _did I fucking stutter_ even though he probably wouldn’t do that but she stops too because she does not know how to answer - because she is not sure if she I, because, more than anything, it’s not something she can remember him asking her before. When she nods and says –

“Hmm, yes, yes of course.” He can hear the awkward highness in her voice and wonders when lying ever felt so bad. She knows he does not buy it, any more than she does, but at least he does not question her out loud. Later  that night – or perhaps the next morning if nights and mornings existed here – when he leaves he seems sorrier about it than he ever has before and she holds on to that because it’s something, a hopeful, foolish, silly, sad spark of something that should not lift her hearts like it does but it does. 

__x__

Oops....just realised I've effed up royally and the original chapter 8 i posted was supposed to be chapter 9 so yeah.....that would have come out of context and made little sense, have rectified, this is the one that was meant to be chapter 9


	10. Chapter 10

**10.**

She wondered, after that first time, if it would ever happen again, wanted and dreaded it in almost equal measure with wanting only winning over dread with a codicil of hating herself for wanting it. Thankfully the wanting and dreading did not last long and it did, it was like that again and again, no more something they seemed to be able to help than all the instances of savage angry fucking. And those instances did not come to an end either, they could alternate between tenderness and ferocity day by day, even hour by hour, even at times, from moment to moment, it was unnervingly like being a teenager all over again and with it she could not escape the idea that herein lay some sort of mythical second chance, though it was chance she did not think of taking for another few hundred years because to do so might have meant admitting that she had done something wrong in the first place.

She wondered how wrong it was to hate being stuck here as little as she did. Oh there were days, there were weeks and months of screaming, of tearing at the walls and destroying everything, all the more after questions of goodness and change started to rear their hydra heads higher and higher. Days of hating the place, of hating the Doctor, hating the stillness and the lack of wind and sun and weather. But really? She knew she could have hated it more, there were at least two days of peace for every day of grief and the vast majority of it came from this thing they seemed to be reforming, that thing that had never quite gone but had always come back more damaged from being shattered again and again. This time it was different, this time she could imagine them running together – if only he had ever held her hand. It was the sensation that haunted her, the elation and the falling – flying feeling of running hand in hand and completely together, hurtling wild across the ground and yet in sync beneath the sky. She could only feel that in memory, the sun warm around her as they shouted with one voice to the sky, that feeling like the sky was answering them back, like they were caught up in it. It was a feeling, she knew, of complete freedom and it was not being trapped in a vault that stopped them from feeling it again, it was the fact that he never took her hand and, as the millennia began drawing to a close she had learned to stop reaching.

And then. The day she heard the music, when she turned to him, not for the first time but maybe the most urgently, turned to him with everything in her silently asking him to help her and she needed it too much not to dare reach again and for the millionth time he drew away and for a moment she wanted the floor to open up and crunch her down and she thought _I’m done, I’m so done, let me lie, just let me be_ – and he stopped and before she knew what was happening – she wasn’t ready – after all this time, she’d imagined, expected, lost hope of it to the point where she was shocked when he finally did it and he took her hands in his and it wasn’t quite the hand hold she had imagined, expected, wished for, not dared hope for, hoped for anyway but oh _fuck_ it was close and he curled his hands around hers as though to protect, to help yes but also – also as though he was reaching out too, drowning just like she was, and in that moment she knew so much she had been too stupid, for all her cleverness to notice before. He did not have to tell her, he did not even have to think it for her to know, all of a sudden that he had not taken her hand all this time because he had been too scared. Because if he had done that, that one last thing, it would have meant that they were them again and that everything between them really could be good and better than good. They had scared each other before – they had scared countless others to the point that the Time Lords had torn them apart – with how strong they were together, that wild untamed force that had the power to topple the universe but here she was, on the brink of that power and she was almost – wavering but _almost_ ready to say she did not want that, that she wanted to see the stars again rather than simply burn them, burn them out of spite because he had left before they could go together. At the same time that she hears him ask, his head direct to hers – _That’s what it’s all been about?_ her mind meets his in the same question. And he says it out loud, actually says it, voices the alternative and the fact that they’re afraid that it could really be _time to be friends again_ and for a hopeless moment she believes she might not say something stupid and perhaps it’s not that she does but the ridiculous, pathetic hope that she cannot keep out of her voice and she says, to her horror –

“Really? Do you think so?” and it’s too much, she sees him retreat before he does it, sees his inability to look her in the eye and be faced with all that hope, to see the mirror of his need for this in her and it hurts, like her hand has been cut off when he lets go of it but a lot of the hurt is because of how good it felt fleetingly – just for a moment – to almost feel that sensation of flying and falling again, the warmth of two suns and the tickle of grass, for a moment she could have almost smelled the sensation of it.

“I don’t know,” he says, retreating fast and there’s something like apology in his voice when he adds – “That’s the trouble with hope,” and he leaves her bereft, crying at the music, no more sure than before of why she is crying at all because there’s happiness in it too, and goddamn awful hope and the music of sacrifice thrumming beneath the barrow and she thinks of how he lied and how he could not help it, could not have known, because after all it seems to feel something _is_ to feel everything and she’s not sure she’s ready for that, not sure of it at all but it comes regardless and he’s there through it all. In all the screaming and crying, all the thinking and hideous feeling that wracks her until she feels even her body will crumble from it, he’s there, through the roll call of the dead, the remembrances that become a routine for a while until she gives up the one name he cannot let slide. Even through his confession and her horror, her own retreat, locking herself back in her vault to get away to keep him out – even through all of that this hope does not have the decency to die.

When she emerges from the vault the second time and joins him with all her terrible forgiveness she feels for the first time since she can remember that the sinister jade shadow that has dogged her her whole life has gone, and she knows that he knows it too and that they can be more equal now than they have ever had the chance of before. Until they stand here, on this roof and he takes her hand, not terrified like before but impulsively, urgently, like he took it when he was a boy and she took his and it no longer matters what else could happen because this is everything just as they are everything.

She suspects, in that moment staring at her hand, feeling the electricity of their touch crackle in every vein, that they may not either of them survive what’s coming, that these lifetimes at least are closing and perhaps closing together, as they have after all so often done. She suspects that this is right, that they will stand together before they fall together that at the very least, they will hold hands again before the last scream up to the sky.

_______x______

 

**And this one if totally finished guys, sorry yeah, it’s been fun. However, as you may be suspecting there’s gonna be a sequel, I’s called _Tear the sky Apart -_  I’ve been dropping gentle hints all the way and then it got really cryptic in parts of this section yeah and that’s because sequel, aka: The Angst version, the one in which Missy remembers the list of her victims, sharing names with the Doctor right up until she remembers the one she wasn’t the one to kill. So yeah this one won’t be porny (or maybe vaguely now and then in places) it will be angsty as hell but please do join for the ride ** **J**


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